This Craft of Mine
by OswaldIV
Summary: This Craft of Mine is a narrative about a young man, Faris. His past is as clouded as his future; immerse yourself in his tale. This story is set in the world of Minecraft.
1. Block 1

_Shlp…shlp…shlp…shlp…_

The soft whispering crunch his sandals made through the sifting sand sounded just like a loaf of bread being broken open. Bread... His stomach growled irritably at the thought… How long had it been since his last meal?

"Three… four days?" The rasp in his own voice startled him with its harshness. With a grimace of disapproval, the young man ran his tongue over his cracked lips. _Salt? _Eyes widened from between the folds of the scarf wrapped around his head as he poked his tongue back out to affirm the taste. Blood. His lips were bleeding. Damn it.

"Damn it…" Faris called out mildly as he continued to drag his sandals through the golden grains of sand. The blazing overhead sun refracted off the millions of tiny mirrors embedded in each crystal as they churned under his feet to surround the traveler in a constant cadence of jittering light. The lights, rather than highlight him against the background, only served to further blend the solitary figure into the vast, glittering space around him. On all four sides, Faris was surrounded by enormous walls of the crystalline sand curving about him in the valley between the dunes. The sole disruption of the glassy mounds was a line of footprints trailing behind the lone shape swaddled head to toe in cloth.

And what a shape he cut. The yellow Keffiyeh that he had tied about his face to block the sun rested its well-worn edges against the dull red of the desert robes shielding every inch of his body from the merciless heat. Only the sharp whites surrounding the coffee-colored irises below the wrinkled brow could be seen from the gaps in the cloth wrapped about his face. Faris continued plodding forward, scowling to bear the tension in his hamstrings as he began to ascend the other dune. His knees were forced above his waist with each near-vertical step as he continued hiking, keeping both his gloved hands clenched about the straps crisscrossing his chest from the enormous rucksack strapped across his back despite the obvious difficulty of the climb. He couldn't afford to drop the bag, after all.

"Not again. Nope, nope, nope." Faris grunted out, accentuating each _nope _with a heel slammed into the sand. Last time, the thing had popped free of the plastic latches holding the top shut, spilling the books all over the sand. His frantic scramble to recover the loose sheets had made him chase each one individually.

"Probably looked like a damn fool…" Faris mused, then burst out into laughter.

Faris had an odd laugh. It consisted of two sharp bursts, in rapid succession. The first was often very low, a deep belly laugh that would have seemed strange coming from his short body. Next, the second blast came at a peculiarly high pitch, almost like a keening puppy. This second shriek was often significantly louder than the original, increasing the oddity tenfold. _Ha-HA! _One-two punch, and he would be done.

Done with his brief ejaculation of amusement, Faris resettled his gaze to the rapidly-approaching ridge of the dune. _And what lies on the other side, I wonder?_

"Why, it depends on who you ask, dear Faris." Faris chimed in response to his own monologue.

"Were you to ask of Epicurus," He tossed his head with a backwards nod to one of the compilations resting within his rucksack, "Absolutely nothing." He continued trudging on.

"And of Ignatius? Everything, apparently." He cackled again, _Ha-HA! _"And where are the Jesuits now? Am I the only one still trudging on with the Lord's word weighing down my body and uplifting my soul?" With a discomforted jerk, he adjusted the rucksack, jolting a copy of King James' Bible against the other texts within.

"Perhaps not mine, but I'll gladly sing His praises if anyone wishes that needlessly-heavy book." Faris muttered dispiritedly as the crest of the dune came level with his eyes.

Faris stopped. His feet sank to surround his ankles in sand, freed to the forces of gravity by his halt in motion. What cause did he have to cross the ridge tonight? Faris scowled at the sandy ridge seductively beckoning him to cross over its supple curve. His eyes followed the line of the ridge as it continued to his right, wincing as the orange flare of the setting sun split his vision white. It was getting dark.

His eyes still dazzled from the sun, Faris sank to his knees in the sand. He tossed himself back against the ridge, gently laying the rucksack beside him as he did so.

"I defy you, oh tempting foe," Faris addressed the ridge he was laying against in a haughty tone. "I shall rest here tonight, for you have nothing to offer me on the other side of your bulk." The ridge did not respond. Faris sighed, unsatisfied with his opponent's silent admission of defeat. Perhaps there may be something other than endless sand on the other side of the dune. He may run into a patch of Sticker-fruit if he were lucky. Sticker-fruit was his name for the delicacies clinging desperately to the cactuses that all-too-infrequently dotted the unchanging landscape of the desert. _Opuntia ficus-indica _was their proper name, if the textbooks were to be believed.

And were they? Faris' nose crinkled in intense displeasure at the thought.

What if the books weren't true? That would mean, and Faris turned to rest his right cheek against the sand to stare at the rucksack as he mused, that everything he had read had been a lie. The collection of philosophers' essays, the biology books, the Bible, the various stories, and on and on until the rucksack was fitting to burst at the seams. Those books and Nani's stories were his only links to the world outside of this endless desert. If those were lies, then his existence was worth no more than these grains of the sand that, for all he knew, comprised the sum of existence. Faris' eyes blinked once in sad consideration, as he fingered his grandmother's charm hanging from his neck, then slowly closed. A slow smirk curved his lips crooked as he stretched luxuriously.

"Will there be an objective truth just for your piece of mind, dear Faris?"

In any case, the nature of this reality didn't matter to him. His path was to the South. And why was that?

_"Porque la abuela lo dijo." _(Because grandmother said so) Faris grunted out, folding his hands across his chest. And why she did that? _"Je ne sais pas." _(I do not know) The French flowed as easily from his lips as the Spanish before it. He was getting better at his French, though he still found himself inadvertently mixing in Spanish words for the gaps left by the textbook.

Faris scratched the stubble growing on his chin as he pondered how he was to complete his mastery of the language when only having a first-year textbook in his bag. Well, that, and the text of that play with the sad little girl on the front. The title of that one roughly translated to _The Miserable Ones_.

"_Ainsi_," (Thus) Faris mumbled out as he rolled to his side and unlatched the plastic latches holding the leather top of the rucksack closed, "_Pendant ces dix-neuf ans de torture et d'esclavage, cette âme monta et tomba en même temps_." (During those nineteen years of torture and slavery, did this soul rise and fall at the same time) He extended a palm into the dark interior of the bag, feeling about amongst the engorged interior with searching fingers. "Hah!" Faris' fingers first traced the symbol burnt into the front of one of the books, then clamped down about the edges of the worn journal. With his other palm braced over the top of the bag to prevent any other books from spilling out, Faris extracted the book. "_Il y entra de la lumière d'un côté et des ténèbres de l'autre_!" (Light entered on one side, and darkness on the other) Faris crowed out, his delighted tone entirely contradicting the solemn words coming from his lips.

It hadn't quite been nineteen yet, though. Not by his count. Faris flipped open the book and began paging through, seeking the page that he had left off from. The small journal, fitting almost perfectly into the niche his hands made when he placed the sides of his palms together, had its yellowed sheets nearly turned black by the characters covering every page from top to bottom. Faris continued leafing through, eventually coming to a page with black numbers proclaiming **30** from the bottom.

This page was also covered in markings, identical in form to all of the pages behind it. However, this text was different from any of the languages filling the other books within the rucksack. The only figures fighting for space upon this page were squares. Many squares. 8 rows of 3, to be exact.

Faris reached back to the spiral binding of the journal, snaking out the grey stick of graphite contained within it and bringing it close to the page. His eyes squinting to concentrate on the square in the rapidly-graying light of the sunset, Faris drew a single line connecting the top-left corner of the box to the bottom-right, making it identical to the rest of the squares covering the page.

Each square had been begun with an initial vertical line standing alone. On the next day, Faris would draw a horizontal line from the top of this initial line. The following day, Faris would draw a parallel to the starting line, this time beginning it from where the previous day's horizontal line had left off. And so on he would continue, until he had finished a box shape and slashed it with the diagonal line, indicating a passage of five days.

"And that makes five more," Faris muttered out as he finished, closing the journal and returning the pencil to its place in the binding of the journal. His recording of the day done, Faris replaced the journal into the rucksack.

Snapping the latches shut with a sharp _click_, Faris laid the rucksack again beside him as he returned his hands to their folded position behind his head. "And now… to sleep." Faris mused as his leaden lids slipped closed. "Perchance to dream, as the prince said." With the poet's words echoing about his head, Faris succumbed to the black fog filling his mind.

It was a dreamless sleep.

"_Squee!_"

Jolted into the mire between sleep and wakefulness by the sound, Faris pondered the interjection. _Squee?_ Faris frowned with his eyes shut. What is _squee_? His brow twitched as he browsed through his mental library of words. _Squee_ did not ring bells in any of the languages he knew. What an oddity…

The next sensation he had was of moisture. Dank and stinking wetness covered his eyelids. Almost as if in response to his recognition, a second mist of hot air blew over his face. Growling in disgust, Faris slapped a palm across his face. The thin slime of the condensation about his face stuck with nauseating strength to his fingers, binding the digits together with the mucus. _Ugh_. "What the hell is this?" Faris barked aloud as his sleepy eyes snapped open. And with a wail of terror at what he saw, Faris brought himself screaming into full-awareness.

The sun was shut out in the penumbra cast by the figure perched over his face. Almost glowing in the encompassing blackness, the empty eye-sockets of a skeletal countenance leered at him from inches away. The beast again huffed a blast of hot air over his face in response to his scream, mucus pouring from the eye-sockets to drip down onto his face. The goo ran in rivulets about his face, some of it dripping into his open mouth.

"Uaaauuhgh!" Faris choked out as he attempted to scream again, gagging on the noxious taste of the beast's slime as it flooded his throat. With a speed fueled by panic, Faris wrenched his arm out of the sand to slam into the face of the beast. His calloused fingers thrust into the eye sockets of the monster as he flailed sand about the top of the dune.

"_Squeeeeeee_!" The monster staggered back at the unexpected assault, toppling over the edge of the ridge and dragging Faris with it. With his fingers lodged in the viscous channels of the beast's barren eye-sockets, Faris could only continue to yell helplessly as the much-larger creature dragged him down the opposite side of the dune.

_This is it, death has arrived_. Faris clawed at the sand with his free hand as he continued his headlong descent on his back, the scalding sand searing his spine raw as it streamed into his clothing from the collar of his robes. _This is Thanatos, he has come for me at last_.

With a somewhat anti-climactic _wumph_, the pair came to a halt at the base of the dune. Faris kept his eyes tightly closed while he waited for his soul to be torn from his body… And waited… And waited?

"_Squeee_!" Death's call rang again, this time tinted with a slight edge of confusion.

"Wha-…?" Faris cautiously opened a single eye to look at his executioner.

Pink. Death's visage was pink. Faris became aware of the hideously clammy sensation enveloping his hand. With a yell of disgust, Faris wrenched his fingers from what he thought were Death's eye-sockets. With an appreciative grunt, Death vigorously shook its head from side to side. The spray of mucus from the beast's recently-vacated nostrils further blanketed Faris' face in slime.

"Blargh!" Faris spewed out a cry of disgust as he rolled to his knees, grabbing a handful of sand as he did. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Faris began to scrub his face with the sand. When his face had exchanged the viscous goo for tender rawness from the rough treatment, Faris was finally able to view his attacker.

He recognized it immediately. _Sus Scrofa_. Where this strain had turned pink, however, he had no idea. The biology textbook listed them as being predominantly darker in color, yet this creature's long fur was unmistakably rose-colored in hue. Twin tusks gleamed white from under the grizzled lip of the beast, menacing him with their ivory edges. The squat legs carrying the rotund body were powerfully muscular, fit for the deadly sprints that these creatures were feared for. Or at least, what the book feared them for. Faris himself was too frightened to consciously be afraid of the beast. His reasoning was restricted to a simple _Wha…wha…what…?_ echoing about in his own head.

With his hands outstretched in a futile attempt to keep the beast at bay, Faris slowly raised himself to a kneeling position before the beast.

"Stay…?" Faris was unsure if he was ordering the beast or his bowels to abjure movement. Nonetheless, the beast refrained from impaling him as he climbed to his feet. "Good. Now…" Faris slowly eked out his words as he turned his body back to the South, keeping his head turned backwards to keep the monster in his field of vision. "Don't move!" Faris screamed out behind him as his limbs churned into movement. His head snapped forward to guide his panicked flight, taking in the view on the southern side of the dune.

He stopped.

It couldn't be possible. He was afraid to blink, for fear that the image would vanish in the interstice of darkness. The landscape poured out in front of him in a dizzying plethora of color, the glittering carpet of golden sand finally ending a short distance away. The _colors_! Faris' eyes began to inexplicably water at the eruption of chromatic light in front of him. The rolling emerald hills were bathed in the vivacious white light of the morning sun. Like a great sentinel, an enormous mountain rose from the green hills to rupture the soft white clouds interspersed throughout the blue-jay sky covering the whole land. It was just like the books. No, better, because it was _real_.

Faris could not move. He couldn't think. He could hardly see, come to think of it. The only colors he had seen in the entire time of his travel, no, his entire _life_, had been the blinding gold of sand and the muted blue of the desert sky. To suddenly be confronted with a barrage of color, of the blues of the rivers crisscrossing the land in veins of cerulean current, the dark earthy brown of the powerful trees stretching upwards to tickle the heavens, the jade reflection of the gleaming dew on the omnipresent foliage; it was almost too much to bear.

"Elysium…" Faris stumbled forward, his hands outstretched to the beckoning paradise.

"Elysiu-_UUGH!_" Faris' back bent double as the forgotten beast behind him slammed its head into the meet of his spine and hips. With a soft sigh of agony, Faris toppled to the ground. The beast snorted once, then trotted in a slow circle about its vanquished enemy. It came to a halt in front of Faris, depositing its flabby rear on the ground as it cocked its head to look down at him. With a gentle snort, the beast leaned forward and dragged a long, slimy tongue across Faris' forehead. Faris looked up at the satisfied expression of the beast with a dour expression, then burst out in laughter. _Ha-HA_!

The wild boar jerked off of its hindquarters in shock at the sound, baring its tusks at the offending creature as Faris picked himself back up to his feet. "You are some little bugger, aren't you?" Faris was delighted at the immediate reaction of the pig to his voice, the flabby ball of pink fur immediately relaxing its tense shoulders upon being spoken to.

Faris laughed, _Ha-HA_! "But you are not Death, I think." Faris extended his hand forward to the boar.

"My name is Faris. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance." The rose-colored boar curiously sniffed the palm of his hand. With a perceivable consideration, the boar licked his sand-covered fingers. A smart monster, this one was.

"You have my thanks," Faris' eyes softened in genuine appreciation as he gazed down at the beast running its tongue over his extended digits, "You brought me to death, and from it to life." He couldn't help but smirk at the archaic words tumbling from his lips. Indeed, though, this pig had inadvertently brought an end to his desert life.

Faris again turned to stare at the lush land before him. The land stretched before him, for miles and miles. Beyond the boundaries of his vision, Faris could still guess at the hints of craggy mountains in the distance. Faris' heart swelled again. His Nani… if she had been able to see this… A lump formed in Faris' throat as he clenched the charm hanging about his neck with trembling fingers. No, he wouldn't do that. She was beyond the clutches of the desert now.

Faris swiveled back around to the pig. "Your name shall be Thanat-" Faris' voice trailed off awkwardly as he stared at the vacated space where the pig had been sitting. It was gone.

_Stiffed by a pig, go figure_. Faris moodily kicked at the sand by his feet. Well, it was not like it could actually understand what he was saying. It was just a dumb animal, incapable of higher-level thinking. The book had said so- The books! Faris turned again to the North for his rucksack, and only had time to let out a quick yelp of panic before-

"Nooo-_OOF_!"

Faris lay gasping for breath on the ground. The swine perched on his chest did nothing to aid his laborious breathing, despite its furious lashing of his face with its slimy tongue. A few feet away, miraculously still latched despite being dragged through the sands by the beast, his rucksack lay with its precious contents unharmed. Groggily pushing the pig off of him, Faris crawled over to his rucksack and shouldered it. Placing both hands on the ground, he again brought himself to his feet. After a brief dusting-off, Faris turned to address the pig.

"Your name shall be Thanatos," The pig cocked its head inquisitively at his words. "Can you dig it?"

"_Squee_!"

"Then we are off." Faris put the desert to his back and strode towards the beckoning scene before him, the pink boar close to his heels. "Let's see what this world has to offer."


	2. Block 2

The sun flared white in the morning sky, setting the dizzying array of colors in Elysium into churning motion with its light.

_Elysium_. That was what he had decided to call it, though for a paradise such as this to come after his purgatory in the desert, even the name of the eternal garden failed to express the joy Faris felt as he continued padding through the dewy grass.

"It's just a shame about all the dirt…" Faris muttered as he continued brushing clods of mud from the shoulders of his robes. In his excitement to run to the lush valley spreading out from the border of the arid desert to his back, Faris had neglected to take into account the changing ground beneath his feet.

His first step onto dirt had been shockingly painful, the firm earth holding together to clash against his heel in a stinging pain that all his years of walking on yielding sand had never dealt. He had given out a strangled yelp as he attempted to bring the offending limb up for scrutiny, entangling his other sandal in the long strands grass in the process. The awaiting puddle of mud, which Thanatos was currently snout-deep in, had done the rest.

At least the books hadn't gotten wet. Faris ran yet another cursory palm over of the top of the rucksack, affirming the dryness of the leather and the precious literary material within. Those books were the only possessions of value that he had.

"Though I would wonder what makes something valuable." Faris remarked to himself, resuming his fruitless attempts to scrub the mud from his clothing. Thanatos trotted up from behind as the young man continued to worry the faded red of his robes even fainter with his efforts.

The pig was in a good mood, its pink fur having been temporarily dyed brown with the wonderfully cool layer of mud coating its entire body. With a small squeak of approval, the hog nuzzled Faris' ankle, eliciting a cry of chagrin from the traveler as he came to a halt and began to rake at the newest addition to the splatters of mud covering his clothing.

Faris scowled at the filthy pig as he gingerly sat down, sifting his hips about in his baggy clothing in an effort to place dry material between his buttocks and the damp grass. He succeeded, and bit his tongue to keep from crying out as the frigid dew from the grass immediately soaked up into the seat of his clothing.

Still smarting from the unexpected chill, Faris took stock of his surroundings. He was seated atop a small hill, overlooking a dense thicket of trees to his front. Aways, and a bit to the left, the purple majesty of the mountain cast a long shadow across Elysium. Following the shade of the mountain as it extended to the right, Faris could see the faint glimmer of a distant body of water just past the tip of the shadow. Directly to his left, though he had to squint to bear the light of the just-risen sun as it shone in his face, Faris could make out the silhouette of another hill. A small stream ran between this other hill and his own, wrapping from the northern edge of the second hill to circle back around its southern edge.

This was truly a wonderful place. Faris continued to search about. To his right, Faris glimpsed and then recoiled from the spiny outlines of a grove of cacti with a soft cry of surprise. "Damn things…" Faris frowned. "Have you come to drag me back to the desert?" Faris barked his question at the cacti and received no response. Unperturbed, he began to lecture the thorny circle. "My 40 days have long been exceeded, and my kingdom awaits me without your assistance, devils." Faris continued, extending a palm to Elysium as he did so. Thanatos began to growl at the cacti, hackles stiffening the downy fur across his back.

Faris smiled, and rubbed a palm across Thanatos' muddy scalp. "I think I can handle this one, friend." He said, scratching between the ears of the pig. The boar immediately relaxed at his touch and whirled about, splattering Faris with more mud as the pig began to lick his filthy fingers. Faris giggled at the tickling sensation, _Ha-HA!_

Continuing to dance his fingers in and out of the reach of the bristly tongue of the pig, Faris again surveyed Elysium. "Now then… What will the first action of this particular Son of Man be in his new kingdom?" Almost as if in response, Faris' stomach let out a tortured groan as it churned out a burbling complaint. Faris grimaced as he pulled himself to his feet, bending low over his aching stomach. "That's one way of answering." He laughed, _Ha-HA!_, earning a snort of disapproval from the hog at his feet.

_Now, where can I get something to eat?_ Faris again glanced west to the patch of cacti. Even from this distance, Faris could see the once-enticing orange flash of Sticker-fruit beckoning him to the thorny circle. Faris briefly considered it, then vehemently shook his head. The Sticker-fruit was a hallmark of his past life. _The only thing I want to remember from the desert is this,_ Faris thought as he grasped the charm hanging about his neck. _Very well then…_ Faris began walking to his left, setting his sights on the stream.

He wasn't particularly thirsty, having inadvertently swallowed some of the muddy water in the puddle he had fallen into, but the books said that fish often frequented mountain streams. He had eaten fish once before, years ago. His grandmother had captured several of what he could recognize from the books as _Cyprinodon_, Faris believed that they were pupfish, from one of the oases that they had passed by in the desert. Though the flaky, insubstantial flesh of the fish did not particularly appeal to Faris, it was infinitely more appetizing than the sour meat of the desert lizards that they could occasionally capture.

"I suppose I could use this?" Faris fumbled about in one of the side-pockets of the rucksack and withdrew a small, bundled-up piece of netting. His grandmother had sometimes used it to tie up her fair. Faris didn't do so often; the veil of his drooping hair served as a much-needed protection for the back of his neck from the harsh rays of the desert sun. Presently, however, Faris shrugged the rucksack from his shoulders and gently placed it a safe distance away from accidentally rolling into the water.

Faris approached the stream, threading his fingers through the fringe of the mesh and stretching it before him in what almost appeared a cat's-cradle. _Now, all she did was scoop them out, right?_ He wondered as he peered down into the jittery surface of the flowing water.

Faris was not entirely unaware of his own appearance. He had been able to see his face in the reflections of oases, and he supposed that he could use the shining surface of his grandmother's charm around his neck should vanity strike him, but the sight of his face in the rushing current still surprised him.

He didn't much resemble the paintings in the books. The gentle slant of his eyes and the wideness of his nose distinguished him from the portraits filling the art books. So too did the color of his skin. Though currently churning blue and green with the reflection cast upon the surface of the flowing water, his caramel skin-tone was a far cry from the pallid complexions of the European beauties. His cheeks, unlike the arching cheekbones that many of the depicted portraits were fond of incorrectly associating to the Virgin Mary, were cut directly down from his eyes to the slant of his jaw; he found they bore closer resemblance to those of Picasso's _Olga Khoklova_, one of his favorite paintings despite its simplicity. Fine stubble covered much of his chin, for it had been weeks since he had subjected himself to the inevitable self-mutilation that accompanied his attempts at shaving with his knife.

He supposed he was ugly. If beauty were to be measured by comparing his likeness to the regality of the portrayed English princes, or the skinny damsels frolicking about the pages of the art books, or even the frizzy-haired scientists beaming in the grainy photographs within the Physics books, Faris was surely an aberration. He was different. "I suppose there must be something wrong with me, then." Faris muttered as he broke eye-contact with his reflection to search through the glassy surface of the water.

Darting back and forth against the current, little objects sent light flashing in every direction off of their shiny scales with their swift movements. "Fish!" Faris crowed. Thanatos, having wandered a short distance away, sent a disdainful backwards glance in Faris' direction at the young man's delighted exclamation. Faris was too excited to notice.

"Shall I roast you? Or spit you?" Faris' mouth was already dripping with saliva as he tightened the netting stretched between his fingers. "Perhaps scale you and cook you up on a… _rock!_" Faris lunged forward with the word, snapping the mesh taut as he prepared to snare it about the struggling body of a fish. Faris plunged his hands into the water, closing the ends of the net upon themselves and securing whatever had been caught up in the strands in the process.

_What did we get?_ Saliva dripped down from his mouth to be swept away in the rush of the current as Faris brought the ensnared space up over his head to view his catch. Like so many shards of crystal, the holes in the mesh allowed azure snippets of sky to filter down through the diamond-shaped gaps of netting to fill Faris' crestfallen vision. _Nothing._

He sat for a moment in dismayed silence, then snapped himself back to a crouched position over the surface of the water. "I'll be damned before a fish gets the best of me!" Faris roared before plunging again into the water.

Ignoring the noisy splashes and subsequent shouts of steadily-increasing fury ringing out behind him, Thanatos continued roaming about the undergrowth.

The day passed, night drawing every-closer as the sun continued its circuit through the sky. As the sun changed position, light was cast onto previously unseen crevices in the abundant valley as it was simultaneously vacated from others.

First appearing as lone pockmarks in the sides of hills, dark grottoes began to be revealed by the changing light. Caves. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of caves. Contrasting with the unbroken golden canvass of desert to its north, Elysium was soon revealed to be riddled with the gaping maws of these caverns.

The darkness of the caverns was absolute. Sunlight streamed down, abruptly truncating the voracious blackness from spilling out of the caves. _Evil._ There was no mistaking the malevolent presence inhabiting these caves; the air was rank with it. Unseen horrors skittered to and fro on the borders of the light curtailing the boundary of each cave, awaiting the slumber of the sun and their chance to retake paradise once more. Soft cries of unspeakable fury rang out from the caves, echoing out to chill the peaceful murmur of the life within Elysium to corpse-like reticence.

Still they waited, drool dripping from jagged fangs, for dark. _Al-Shaiyat'in_. Still they waited, thirsting for blood, for night.

It was not until the land on the western side of the mountain had exchanged black shadow for the dying orange of sunset that Faris abandoned his efforts. "It's no use!" Faris wailed as he tossed himself down to the grass. The sodden _squish_ his clothing made as he fell and the careless regard with which he tossed the length of netting away spoke to the success of his expedition. "How the hell did _Nani_ do that with a simple piece of mesh?" Faris continued to groan as he pounded a fist on his empty belly to try and deaden the pain.

The rapid jerks and sudden movements of his failed fishing attempts had exhausted what little strength he had left. It was all Faris could do not to pass out where he lay. Gathering his numb arms around his knees, Faris rolled to his stomach with a grunt of complaint. His knees seconded the sentiment with a chorus of popping and snapping from the stiff tendons and ligaments. Setting his vision to the silhouette of his rucksack, its bulkiness cut out black against the sunset, Faris began to crawl to his small library.

He reached it just as the sun drew level with the horizon, setting the sky aflame in citrine brilliance. Faris was too spent to spare a glance at the gorgeous view in the distance. Faris tossed himself back to lie against the rucksack with his feet facing the stream and, gathering up the last of his energy, screamed out: "Thanatos!" His voice, cracking and frail as it may have been, elicited a distant _squee_ and a pattering of feet.

Faris dolefully listened to the approaching thumping of feet for a surprisingly long time before the pig finally appeared to his front at the crest of the hill that the stream was encircling. The hog's cheeks swollen to what appeared twice their size, Thanatos continued rushing towards Faris. Faris stared between his feet at Thanatos as the pig cleared the creek with a single bound, uttering a strangled _whuf_ through its nostrils as it did. The wheezing grunts of the pig as it came to a halt next to Faris cut through the rapidly-cooling twilight air.

"Are you okay, buddy?" Faris asked as he placed a hand on Thanatos' head, gently rubbing between the pig's floppy ears. Thanatos responded by promptly leaning over and unloading the contents of his mouth onto Faris' stomach.

Mucus, saliva, and various other liquids poured out onto Faris' belly. Faris was too taken by surprise and fatigue to do anything but shoot Thanatos a betrayed expression. "You… jerk!" Faris moaned weakly, beginning to claw at the small soup of bodily fluids rapidly soaking through the front of his clothing. _Ugh_. The disgusting warmth of the mess was perhaps only slightly less revolting than the glutinous chunks of semisolid material embedded in the sludge.

_Wait…_ Faris snatched up one of the globs between his fingers and held it up, squinting to discern its outline against the graying sky. The cylindrical base of the object was pliable to the touch, bending inwards to accommodate his pinching fingers. The cap of the object also yielded to his inquisitive touch, rebounding at the moment that he relieved pressure. _Agaricus_. A fungus. A decomposer. In other words, a mushroom.

Thanatos sat on his haunches with his tongue out, panting like a dog as Faris began to sort through the soupy mess on his chest. Fat tubers, juicy taproots, sumptuous leeks; Thanatos had brought a veritable feast to him. Faris was shocked. "For me?" he asked the pig, miming the mushroom towards his mouth. The hog nuzzled his foot and squealed once, earning a growled response from Faris' stomach.

Needing no further license, Faris popped the mushroom into his mouth and began to devour the buffet laden upon his torso. _It's all so good!_ Unheeding to the slime covering most of the food, Faris continued shoveling the food into his mouth. He hadn't eaten in _days_. Snorting noisily in his haste to fill the agonizing void in his belly, Faris remained oblivious to the increasingly-darkening sky.

"Aah!" He was sated. Faris lazily crossed his arms behind his head and twined his fingers in his hair. Though far from silenced, the nagging voices calling for relief from his belly had been temporarily quieted. The sky was dark now, stars beginning to wink on in the nebulous blackness above Elysium.

Faris loved to sleep under the stars. Perhaps living the life of a nomad had forced him to gain a fondness for stretching out beneath an open sky, but in truth, enclosed spaces had always filled Faris with a panicked sense of entrapment. Even during the brutal sandstorms of the desert, when the ferocious winds had forced him to burrow into the side of a sand dune to hide from the vicious currents of air, Faris would always leave a hole open to the sky. It was as if by maintaining sight of it, he could assure himself that his shelter would not become his tomb.

A full belly, a new home. "This is paradise." Faris giggled out through his teeth as he luxuriously stretched to the stars. "I believe thanks are in order, lad?" Faris called out, turning to rest his head against the rucksack as he searched for and then found the back of his piggy companion off to the right. "Thanatos! Come over here."

A low growl sounded in response. Faris abruptly stopped smiling, worry creasing his brow as he propped himself up on his elbows. "Thanatos?" Faris could not see Thanatos' face; the pig stood immobile, its fur on end, never turning from menacing the land to the south. On all fours, Thanatos continued to grit out a ferocious snarl. The taut muscles of Thanatos' back rippled under his skin as the hog began to trot back and forth. Something was making the hog anxious.

Faris was beginning to become scared. "Thanatos, stop that!" Faris barked out, trying to cover the fear in his own voice with an air of authority. The pig ignored him and continued to pace back and forth, never once breaking focus to look back at Faris. Ahead of the pig, the boughs of trees cast menacing darkness down to the floor of the small forest to the south. Empty blackness stared down the pair, punctuated by the moonlight-bleached trunks of trees cut out from the gloom.

Fearful whines began to intersperse through Thanatos' growls. Faris propped himself up on one elbow and began to shout. "Thanatos, shut up!" _Just shut him up. Shut him up and it will be alright,_ Faris thought, rationale rapidly losing ground to fear. He had no reason to be scared, he tried to reassure himself; yet, his heart began to pound in his chest all the same. The mountain loomed in the distance, the moon behind it rendering it a black silhouette. If the mountain was lord of Elysium by day, it was its reaper by night.

And suddenly, they were no longer alone. Between two gaunt white tree-trunks, a single spot of light snapped open to rupture the inky blackness. Both Faris and Thanatos immediately become silent. A gemstone in the murky dark, the light continued to stare down the pair. Faris' recently-filled stomach froze, contracting to an icy-pit in his abdomen. Another light snapped alongside the first, and then another. Blood began to pulse in Faris' eardrums, drowning out the low growls coming from his right as Thanatos bared gleaming tusks at the lights. There were now five tiny lights coming from the forest, clustered in a small circle to stare down Faris and his companion.

_No, no! Please just stay there... please!_ Faris was unsure who he was directing his supplications to. _Just stay in the forest, I'll go back to the desert._ With a hiss that shattered the frozen calm of the night, the horror came forth from the trees.

A single swath of moonlight cut across the brief meadow spanning between Faris and the beast. The monster advanced, chittering out a second cry as it brought a shaggy limb from the shadow of the forest.

"_Arachne…_" Faris managed to eke out in a trembling voice. The pit of ice in his stomach had extended cold tendrils up to grip his quailing heart. The beast advanced, a horrifying mess of twisting limbs and hoary skin, reeking of the fresh blood dripping from its jagged pincers; all clustered below those gleaming eyes. _Those eyes…_

"Spider…" Faris squeaked out, still frozen on one elbow as the beast began to advance. _Those eyes…_ Blazing from the face of the beast, each eye seemed to ensnare one of Faris' senses. The spider's visage expanded to fill his vision, blackness wiping out the world around him to plunge him into darkness. The five eyes multiplied and filled the blackness; soon his vision was perforated with thousands of burning embers in the caliginous dark.

The eyes pierced him, staring at and through him. The beast hissed again, its call burgeoning to fit each of the eyes surrounding Faris with its own snarling voice. _So loud!_ Faris collapsed to his knees as the hurricane of ungodly sound burst through his mind, drowning out Thanatos' growls in an ocean of horrific white noise.

_Aajo._ (Come) The voice penetrated through the cacophony in his mind, sounding both alien and familiar to Faris. The eyes opened wide to stare fire down at him from every direction. _Aajo!_ The voice in his head grew louder, each of the eyes narrowing to a slit as if their owners were smiling.

This was not his voice. Faris knew that it was not his voice. It couldn't be. The voice called again for him, as alluring as it was repulsive in its low hiss. Faris stood. Had he been able to look at himself, he would have seen that his eyes had rolled back in his head; a soft, gargling hiss was coming from his throat, matching the call of the spider as Faris took a tottering step towards the beast. _Aajo._ The call sounded out again. The hiss of the voice-that-was-not-his grew delighted, serpentine in its liquidity. Faris took another step forward, then broke into a shambling run. _I have to go! I must come!_ Somewhere in his mind, behind the opaque walls of staring eyes, a voice was calling at him to stop, to think, but he could not. The call was too powerful, overriding the distant calls of his sanity as he hurtled towards the spider with arms outstretched. _I must come…_

"_Squee!_"

Jolted into the mire between sleep and wakefulness by the sound, Faris pondered the interjection. _Squee?_ Faris frowned with his eyes shut. _What is squee?_ His brow twitched as he browsed through his mental library of words. _Squee_ did not ring bells in any of the languages he knew. What an oddity…

"_Squee!_" With another furious cry, Thanatos broke into a charge. The keen tusks protruding below the bared lips of the hog shone ivory in the ebony darkness, gleaming in preparation for blood.

With a _wumph_ that resonated through the air, Thanatos slammed into the spider. The pig bored one of its tusks into the spider's face, puncturing the gelatinous surface of a gleaming eye in a spray of blood. Abruptly, the walls of eyes disappeared from around Faris, leaving him standing with one hand still outstretched as the spider tumbled over with another piercing wail.

"Wuh-what?" Fairs looked on in bewildered horror as Thanatos pressed his advantage, jumping onto the upturned belly of the spider and slashing into its soft belly with one of his tusks. That monster… _They can't grow that large!_ The books had said... this made no sense! _The books…_ A low growl alerted him to the danger behind him, coming directly from where the rucksack had been. Faris turned.

_No._ Faris began to scream. A man was standing directly behind him. Only this man had to be dead. He _had_ to be.

He wasn't. The creature stood staring at him, breath wheezing out of the punctured lungs in a soft moan that chilled Faris' thumping heart. One arm dangled uselessly from the side of the man, remaining attached to the torso by only a few bloody strands of flesh. The horrendous gash cloven between the clavicle and shoulder of the man gaped at Faris, an open mouth silently screaming to match Faris' own cries as the walking corpse began to advance towards him. Behind Faris, Thanatos bellowed as he tossed his head upwards, sending a serrated tusk ripping up from the swollen abdomen of the spider through its jointed neck. Blood sprayed into the air in a mist, matting the fur about the hog's face to its neck.

_His brachial artery, his blood, how did-?_ "How the fuck are you alive!" Faris wailed at the corpse. The man continued its advance, setting a rotting foot upon the rucksack as the monster prepared itself to leap.

_The books!_ "No!" Faris roared, charging forward. Lacking even the presence of mind to close his fist properly, Faris brought an arm swinging about to crash into the corpse's face with a childlike sloppiness of movement. Faris' hand burst into the left side of the man's face to implode the rotting skull with a gushing _squish_. Dribbling out green slime from its destroyed face, the beast toppled to the ground with a final, dying grunt.

_Not possible, not possible._ Faris snatched at the heavy leather straps attached to the rucksack and whirled about to place it on his back, knees almost buckling under the sudden increase in weight. _The books never said the dead return, never!_ Faris spun on his heel to face Thanatos. _Only that damned silly book of King James, and I will be damned if I heard a trumpet,_ he thought in a delirious panic. "Thanatos!" Faris cried out. Thanatos pulled his tusk out of the twitching, dying body of the spider and turned to face Faris. Behind the pig, more burning eyes flickered on from the entombing darkness of the forest as two more spiders emerged from the blackness. "Look out!" Faris cried, as one of the spiders leapt from the shadows to drive a pincer into the side of the hog.

"_Squee!_" Thanatos roared out in fury, turning to impale the attacking spider through the center of its head with a sodden crunch. The other spider leapt onto the pig, bowling Thanatos over before he could remove his tusk from the dying husk of the first.

Faris shouted in panic and had begun to run to the aid of the hog when furious roars boomed out from his right. Cut out even blacker than the night, a multitude of blurred forms continued to barrel towards Faris from the west. Even through the haze of night and fear, Faris could distinguish their shapes as those of men.

_Not men!_ Faris vehemently contradicted himself. _Devils!_ He darted towards the stream, clearing it and landing heavily at the base of the hill that it encircled. Unperturbed, the horde of zombies churned into the waters as Faris picked himself up and continued to run. Faris reached the crown of the hill, his knuckles white from gripping the straps of the rucksack bobbing up and down on his back.

"_Squee!_" Pitiful squeals sounded out from the forest. Faris turned. Pink fur flitted in and out of the darkness as the hog continued to fight, the dark blood flashing into the air only made visible by the light of the multitude of glowing eyes rapidly growing from the bowels of the forest.

"Thanatos!" Faris screamed, forgetting where he was as he extended a grasping hand towards his struggling friend. _They're killing him!_ The mountain stood above all, glaring down impassively as another ripping pincer split open the side of the pig. _They're killing hi-_ Faris' dismayed thoughts were cut short as the first of the horde reached him, slamming into him and knocking him backwards over the unseen side of the hill.

Faris tumbled down, his vision blurred as he rolled end over end down the hill. Darkness whirled about in an insane waltz with the pallid face of the moon in the senseless jumble of his vision as he tumbled downward. And then, suddenly, he was falling.

Faris plummeted through blackness for what seemed an eternity before coming to a crashing halt as his body slammed into a stone floor. The _crack_ of his skull slamming into a rock ruptured the kaleidoscope of color and sky to spill stars through his vision as he hit the ground. Another formless shape falling alongside him flashed through his vision and disappeared out of sight. The rucksack, its straps snapping and slipping from his shoulders in the fall, hit the ground with a reverberating _thump_ alongside him.

There was silence.

Slowly, gingerly, Faris picked himself up from the ground. "Ohh…" Faris let out a soft groan, swiping a hand across the sticky wetness beginning to run down the side of his face and coming away with the tips of his fingers slick with his blood. He stared stupidly at them for a moment, then raised his gaze to peer about himself with dim eyes.

Faris' only sight was granted to him by means of a silvery column of moonlight ending in a small ellipse directly in front of him. _This isn't good,_ Faris thought as he quickly stepped over to place his feet in the spot of moonlight, the bloody footprints left behind him quickly being swallowed by the gloom.

Shivering, bleeding, Faris stood in petrified silence in the diaphanous shaft of light. All around him, blackness groped for him with inky palms. Faris shivered and drew his arms close around his body. The gloom seemed ready to snatch and drag him into its bowels by any bit of his body that he left exposed. _This isn't good._ Above him, perhaps twenty feet up, the moon sat perfectly framed by the jagged edges of the hole that he had fallen into.

Faris fixed his eyes on the distant figure of the moon, desperately trying to fight down the strangling feeling of entrapment coursing through his body with every thump of his feverously beating heart. _You're fine, you're fine,_ he tried to reassure himself. The unseen walls of the grotto he was in seemed to shrink, wrapping about the sides of the stream of moonlight like the sides of a glove. Or, rather, a coffin. Faris' eyes filled with tears of panic as he bit his lip to keep from screaming. _I can't move, I can't see, I can't breathe._ "Let me out…" Faris moaned softly to no one, his voice broken and trembling with his pent-back tears.

_You're fine, you're fine,_ he tried to reassure himself, even as tears began to draw glistening tracks in the filth and blood covering his face. _You're going to be okay, you're-_ A low groan behind him alerted Faris to his error. Slowly, agonizingly, Faris forced himself to turn an about-face.

With another groan, the zombie that had fallen into the pit with Faris picked itself up from the ground. Faris fell back with a cry, crab-walking backwards into darkness until his desperate retreat was curtailed by a wall of cold rock. The beast stumbled forward into the stream of moonlight with its head hung low, the gossamer luminance gleaming off of the rotting scalp of the creature.

Faris burst into sobs of terror, weakly extending a palm forward in a plea for mercy. The dead man raised its head, revealing a face ravaged by death. Maggots fell from gaps in the decaying flesh as the beast gazed down upon the cowering young man. "Unnnngh…" The corpse moaned, one of its eyes dropping out from a shattered eye-socket and bursting on the ground like an egg. Stepping over the destroyed organ, the dead man lurched with grasping arms towards Faris.

"No! No!" Faris wailed, unable to articulate any further through the fog of fear drowning his mind. With another moan, the monster fell upon him.


	3. Block 3

_"Raghupati raaghava rajaraam, patit pavaan sitaaraam."_

_Beautiful and sad, the mournful notes rang over the desert plain to Faris. Hopping from toe to toe in his oversized sandals to try and keep the scalding leather from the soles of his feet, Faris continued his meticulous efforts to prize the orange fruit from its spiny benefactor._

This is hard…_It wasn't fair that he had to be the one to stick his hands into the arms of the barbed cacti. He could barely reach the top of a cactus unassisted, yet he was expected to be able to pluck out a tiny fruit from it?_

_Then again, if _he _wouldn't do it… "Nani would have to do it." Faris mumbled out. He shifted, bringing one arm down to his side and stretching with the other for his succulent trophy. "And she can't," his voice was strained as he continued to reach, '''cause she's old." Closer, closer. One finger brushed the leathery surface of the Sticker-fruit, then slipped off as Faris nearly lost his balance._

_"Sitaaraam, sitaaram, bhaj pyaare tu sitaraam."_

_His grandmother continued to sing. Faris bounced on one heel, becoming impatient. He was getting hungry, but, despite the healthy weight of the small fruit-stuffed sack lying a few feet away, Faris wouldn't even consider leaving this fruit unpicked. A sharp squawk cut out from high above him._

_Faris didn't even need to look up to check. The cry of the bird, what the biology book called a _Phainopepla_, was enough to distinguish it to him. Faris loved those birds. White patches were cut out from their glossy black feathers as they spun and dove in the air. They were a delight compared to the lifeless sketches in the books._

_With a grunt, Faris hopped up and ensnared the fruit in a palm. "Yeah-!" He began in celebration. He came down from his leap, raking his arm down the spines of the cactus as he went. "Oww!" Faris shouted, falling back from the cactus to land heavily on his backside._

_"_Behta!_" A frail voice, phlegmatic and ragged where the singing had been soft as silk, sounded out. _Nani_._

_They had made camp in a small natural overhang formed by a dune. The mixture of sand and gravel within the dune gave the overhanging portion the stability it needed to protrude over their resting place like a mother bear's paws around her den, though Faris liked to think of it as her jaws. They had driven four posts in the sand, all within the boundaries of the shade cast by the outcropping. These posts tethered down a thick square of leather by the corners to hang stretched a few feet above the ground. The singing was coming from underneath this improvised sun-shield, the source of the delicate melody hidden as Faris ran to the camp._

_He came to a halt, spraying up sand before him in a wave as he called out: "Yes, _Nani?_"_

_The singing stopped. Faris slipped the sack from his shoulder and crawled under the sheet. The old woman lay there, her singing reduced to a pleasant humming as she continued to thread the needle through the torn cloth in her hands._

_His pants had ripped when he fell the other day, sent tumbling to the ground as the sandy dune he had been standing on had given way. It wasn't_his_fault, though. The stupid rucksack had dragged him down ass-first; his loins were still tender from the sudden scouring with hot sand that had followed his pants splitting up the seam. If it were up to _him_, he would just toss the rucksack away, but of course it wasn't; his grandmother's reaction to that suggestion had permanently shut that down as a possibility._

_She didn't acknowledge him as he wiggled up alongside of her, keeping his belly pressed to the ground._

_"Yes, _Nani-jaan_?"_

_She did not answer him, only continued to sew and hum. Faris stretched out and gently tugged on the sleeve of her robe with a child's urgency. "_Nani-jaan_, what is it?"_

_She stopped sewing and turned to him with a mock scowl. "Does a grandmother need reason to see her _Behta?_"_

_Faris couldn't argue with that, though he had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes at the baby-name. He was far past being a child, he thought. _Nani _said he was eight, but he had difficulty understanding what that meant. Though he knew what constituted a year, one revolution of their planet about the sun, he did not understand the standard set in order to measure out eight years. Eight years from his birth? Every day was like the last; how could his frail grandmother keep one separate from the next?_

_Faris rolled over in the cramped space under the sheet, staring up at the leather stretched out directly above him. The rough, scarred surface of the hide was just like that which covered a few of the books, though the crack his small hand reached up to trace absentmindedly reminded him more of his _Nani_'s wrinkled face._

_"Have you decided what you are going to read today?" His grandmother asked._

_Faris had. Had he been selecting them from the start, he would only have read the science books and discard the rest. However, first implemented by his grandmother and eventually taken up by his own curiosity, a rotation of sorts had developed to give Faris an equal chance at all of the different books. He had spent a week trudging through the tongue-tying incomprehensibility of the Spanish textbooks and the cycle had finally returned to his favorite subject. "Yes, _Nani-jaan_. I'll start now." With that, he squirmed out feet-first from the sun-shield._

_The rucksack was lying a few feet away. Crawling over and unlatching it, Faris reached in and began to root about for the book. His hands hit the hard cover and grasped it, pulling the book out. Tucking it under his arm, Faris strode out from the overhang, back into the hazy glare of the sun._"Ess moo-cho sol oi!" (Is much sun today!) _He chirped out in bastardized Spanish._"Yo ess-pare-oh que el frio bengo!" (I hope that the cold me come!) _He continued, making less sense by the syllable. Circling about, he scaled the steep northern side of the dune sheltering their camp and sat down. Beneath him, unseen, his grandmother began to sing again as Faris examined his reading material for the day._

Biology – 24th Edition_, the title shouted out at him in block letters from over the crown of the pouty-faced fish (a grouper) staring sullenly at him from the cover. Faris opened the book and began to flip through, finding the page he had left off from about halfway through it._

_"Gene expression…" It began, "refers to the production of proteins as directed by the information coded within the aforementioned excerpts of DNA. Primary in expressing the gene is mRNA, which is produced according to…" Faris continued reading, stretching out comfortably on his belly as he pored over the book._

The dead man bore down on him, arms outstretched to grab him. To rip him. To kill him. "No!" Desperation cracked Faris' voice as the monster leapt upon him. Reflexively, unthinkingly, Faris shot both of his feet up to slam into the stomach of the corpse. The devil snarled and swiped a grimy hand through the air, fighting to get closer against Faris' straining legs as its jagged claws hissed through the air inches in front of Faris' face. Gathering up his strength, Faris kicked out, launching the beast backwards through the column of moonlight to slam into the opposing wall of the grotto.

Scrabbling frantically at the wall he had collapsed against, Faris pulled himself from the stone floor just as the beast let out a roar and charged him again. _Shit!_ Faris lunged to his right, the grasping talons of the zombie clenching empty air and stone where his throat had been a moment before.

Sloppily pushing off from the rounded walls, the dead man crashed into Faris, pinning him against another wall and beginning to tear at the front of his robes.

Dizzy from horror, Faris snapped a hand up to slam into the face of the zombie, shoving away the snapping, rotting teeth inches from closing around his throat. It was going to kill him. He was going to die here in this grave. Faris jerked his head back to avoid another snarling lunge. "No…" Faris gasped out, panting from fear and exertion.

One hand struggling with the deadly jaws of the zombie and the other desperately closed about one of its clutching hands, Faris was pinned against the wall as the zombie continued its vicious assault. The monster hooked up its free claw, driving claws into Faris' unprotected side.

Agony flared through him. "_Aagh!_" Faris screamed as the corpse's claws tore into him, shredding his robes and sending blood spattering against the wall.

Change. Something began to grow amidst the fear and agony. _This is mine._ His eyes grew cold. The zombie let out a guttural groan against his palm as it plunged jointed knives deeper into Faris' side.

_This is mine…_ The rank of his blood began to poison the air as sticky wetness soaked into his robes. The monster was driving its diseased, rotting palm into him as if it were trying to tear out his liver.

Rage. The silver column of moonlight behind the zombie tinted red in his vision as Faris' gasping moans of pain became silent. He watched with almost detached fascination as the zombie shook its other claw free of his slackening grip and slashed bloody tracks into the arm restraining its head. He supposed it hurt. No, it _did_ hurt, but he could not feel it. The pain was behind him, a trifle. A trickle within the flood rapidly breaking loose inside of him. Not screams but _fury_ pounded at the inner walls of his sanity, seeking to free itself.

_This is mine, this is mine-_ "This is mine!" roared Faris, shaking his bleeding arm loose of his attacker and slamming a fist into its face. Hot, maggoty flesh sprayed into the air as the zombie staggered back, the loud _crack_ of its shattering cheekbone being drowned by Faris' furious cries as he leapt off of the wall.

Pouncing forward, Faris brought another blow crashing into the corpse's face, this time swiping sideways to spin the monster around with a meaty _thud_ as his fist connected with its jaw.

The dead man stumbled away, then gathered, and leapt at him. The force of the fiend's momentum sent Faris tumbling to the ground with the roaring beast atop him. Digging claws into the stone on either side of his head, the dead man dragged itself forward. Faris' arms were pinioned to the stone, the weight of the horror on his chest rendering his arms useless as the creature began to slash down into his unprotected face.

Once, twice, thrice. Three furrows were torn open on the sides of his face and neck as the zombie continued slashing at him, seeking his eyes with jagged talons. Faris bellowed in rage, his pain lost in the heady fog as he lunged upwards from the ground. The sudden shift in its prey's movement upset the zombie from its perch, causing it to dig claws again into his side to keep from toppling off.

Oblivious to the renewed agony as the wounds in his side were again filled by twisting, grasping daggers of claws, Faris rocked his hips up from under the beast to hook the heel of one foot about the monster's face. Pressing the back of his heel to the corpse's neck, Faris wrenched his hips sideways to bring the zombie crashing down to the stone floor.

The strangling moans of the beast struggling against the heel pinning it by the throat to the ground rang as music to Faris as he freed his other leg and shot it over the bucking torso of the zombie.  
"This is _my_ life! _Mine!_" Faris thundered as he seized the wildly-flailing arm of the beast from between his legs and gripped it to his chest.

White-knuckled, Faris threw himself backwards with the arm of the monster still clutched against his chest. The back of both his legs were braced against the body of the monster, one above and one below the arm. Faris' own head hit the stone with a _thunk_, stars speckling the face of the moon that suddenly filled his vision as he continued to struggle with the zombie. He had fallen back into the column of moonlight, the sight of the monster lost in the darkness of the grotto.

With the torso of the zombie immobilized by the strong legs pinning it to the ground and its arm immobilized to Faris' chest, the force as Faris began to strain backwards had only one place to go.

Directly against the joint of the Corpse.

Ungodly moans erupted from the darkness at his feet, echoing about the grotto as if the walls had begun to wail in agony. The arm of the monster began to bend backwards, warping with the curve of Faris' straining back. Faris' eyes were unseeing, the stream of moonlight casting down a stark halo about the face demonized by rage. The dried tear-tracks cutting through the mud and blood caked about his face were warped and distorted by the ferocious grimace peeling back his lips; they glowed now as lightning tracks with the moonlight.

"My life!" Faris bellowed, tossing himself back once more. The arm of the Corpse snapped backwards as the bone and tendon gave way with a nauseating _craaak_. The thrashing hand and forearm went limp in his hands with frightening suddenness, even as the monster pinned underneath him in the blackness began to howl in agonized fury.

Letting go of the shattered limb, Faris rolled out of the moonlight and disappeared in the direction of the wounded howls.

The circle of moonlight within the hollow was no longer circular. The continual movement of the moon now cast light sideways through the hole at the top of the grotto, cutting a white ellipse into the floor of the natural oubliette now ringing with tortured screams.

A shout rang out, cutting off the wailing as the _thud_ of a fist crashing into unprotected flesh rang out.

A voice cried out in the darkness, now filled with pain. Struggling voices, one panting in exertion, the other growling in fury, echoed about, constantly shifting position as if their originators were rolling about one another.

The ellipse was changing. The pale silver was beginning to glow brighter as the ellipse continued to be skewed sideways by the shifting light.

The back of one hand broke into the light that was now beginning to show threads of gold, scrabbling about for something, _anything_. The hand reached out to the opposing side of the light and clutched something in the blackness. A cry of triumph was heard, abruptly transforming into a wail of pain as a snarl broke off into the _schlock_ of teeth clamping down on tender flesh. The arms shot back across the transforming light to its owner, the bloodied hand clenched around an object.

A furious cry rang out, followed by a sharp _crack_. The roars of the wounded beast became gargles as a jaw broke in the blackness. Another cry, another _crack_. Dark liquid sprayed into the silvery-gold circle of changing light from the unseen blackness.

The _cracks_ continued, becoming wetter and more diminished, now sounding like a piece of fruit being mashed to a pulp. The gargles ceased; no, the gargles _had_ ceased, but still the degenerating _cracks_ cut through the dark.

They stopped. So, too, did the furious shouts of rage. The circle of rapidly-growing sunlight streaming into the grotto from above, if splattered with blood before, now glimmered and danced upon the shallow puddle of red liquid spreading on the stone floor.

A soft cry, like that of an animal in pain, crept into the still air. A halt, a shuddering breath, and the wavering cry broke from trembling lips once more. Hurt filled it. The voice quivered and broke; then, soft weeping cut through the blackness.

Faris came back to himself. He was standing… no, _hunched_ over a shapeless mass lying limp against one of the walls of the grotto. Golden sun continued to filter through the aperture in the ceiling, broadening, threatening to reveal the destroyed figure of the monster. Faris stumbled back, pulling his left hand free of the holes his clenching fingers had torn in the dead man's throat.

Clattering against a wall and landing in the bloody puddle with a _splash_, the jagged stone that Faris had smashed in the face of the beast with was cast away.

The adrenaline left him, bleeding out with his wounds and his tears to allow Faris' fatigue to inundate his limbs. He sank to his knees in the puddle, warmth soaking through the cloth and into his knees.

His head heavy with exhaustion, Faris focused on the circle of light above his head. _Just go there…_ He was so tired… _It will be alright…_ Faris reached a hand up, grasping at the clouds drifting high up across the open sky in the tiny window of the grotto. "Let me out…" he repeated. With a final lunge, Faris grasped for the light and fainted dead away, plummeting face-first into the golden shimmer adrift in the pool of blood. Darkness took him.

_"…thus signaling to the ribosome that the assembly of the protein has been completed, and removing it for future use-"_

_"Faris!" Gravelly voice made even more hoarse by panic, his grandmother called out for him._

Oh no… _Faris dropped the book into the sand and leapt to his feet. The plea had come from below him, under the unseen crook of the sandy overhang where they had made camp._Is it the Wehsh? _Faris asked himself in a panic as he began to run. Scalding sand made his footprints shallow as he slid down the far side of the dune, circling back to the camp in a tight arc._

_"_Nani!_" Faris shouted out as he came around the edge of the hill._

_The sight was awful. His grandmother was sprawled out on her stomach, one hand spasmodically twitching in front of her towards the rucksack like a dying bird trying to take flight. A dark stain of wet sand was splayed out in front of her downed head. Faris' stomach lurched as he recognized the scent of blood. Behind her, one of the posts of the sun-shield lay where it had been knocked out from the sand by his grandmother's haste. The leather sheet of the sunshield now fluttered free, slapping the freed corner down onto the sand with a sharp_thwack_every time it hit._

_"_Nani-jaan!_" Faris cried out, sounding like the child he was as he ran to his grandmother's side. The ease with which her limp body turned over as he pulled on her shoulder terrified Faris. The boy continued to shake his grandmother, shouting down as he shook a frame that now felt more bone than flesh. "_Nani-jaan_, get up!"_

_She awoke. _Thwack! _Faris jumped as the loose sun-shield cracked into the sand behind him. She tried to push herself off from the ground with her hands and failed, collapsing to the ground with a soft cry of pain. "_Mukhadaraat…_" She pleaded pitifully, begging him with her eyes._

_Faris started. "Ah… ok!" He jumped to his feet and darted for the rucksack, dredging his feet through the bloody sand as he dropped to his knees and began to search inside of the bag. Another thwack rang out as his trembling fingers thrust into cramped darkness, searching for…_there! _Faris pulled out a small purse and ran back to his grandmother, fumbling with the knots sealing the purse shut._

_Everything else in the rucksack had some type of marking upon it. The purse did not. The books all had titles and authors, or other distinguishing marks upon them; even the leather journal, empty, had the _fleur-de-leis _burnt into its front. However, no mark interrupted the black silk of the purse. It dangled like an ebon teardrop from the golden strings tying it closed._

_Faris upended the bag in his palm, clutching his hand about its precious contents. In front of him, wrinkles turned to crevasses by the intense agony stretched across her face, his grandmother continued to groan and hold her palms tight across her waist._Just hold on… _Faris mentally pleaded as he began to draw lines in the bloody sand in front of his _Nani_._

_Four short horizontal lines were drawn, perpendicular to the shivering body of the old woman. Faris pinched his fingers together in the small mound he had poured into his hand from the purse._Not enough._It wasn't enough. Faris ferried what was in his palm as carefully as he could, but it was no use. Only three of the furrows were able to be filled with the sparkling, glowing red powder._

_It was hypnotic. Small white gems gleamed like diamonds in the bloody rough of the _Mukhadaraat_. No, bloody wasn't the right word. The powder wasn't bloody; it was beautiful. As beautiful as it had ever been._

_Faris rocked back, clutching the empty purse to his chest with both hands. "_Nani_, it's ready!" He frantically squeaked out, tapping the sharp blade of his grandmother's shoulder. Her face came out of the dirt, bloodshot eyes staring beadily first at the purse in his hands, then to Faris, then finally down to the furrows in front of her. Hunger blossomed in her eyes. With a colossal effort, she dug her hands into the sand and pulled herself forward to lay her face in the dirt directly next to the nearest furrow._

_Her eyes closed tight. One hand came up, blocking the path of one nostril with a thumb as the other hand raised to cover the opposing side of her face. She leaned in, and began to inhale heavily through her nose._

_Sand and powder alike flowed up, glomming together to create obstructions in her nose that were noisily cleared out with further huffing and snorting as his grandmother moved her head to the left, snorting up the fine line of red powder as she went._

_Faris, having turned around to face the desert as she began, fought to keep a disgusted grimace from spreading across his face. He knew she had to do this,_knew_she was sick, but he could not watch his grandmother use her medicine without feeling that something was wrong. That _she _was doing something wrong. With much grunting and coughing, his grandmother finished the first line of _Mukhadaraat_, and began on the second._

_Her sickness was something she had contracted, she had once said. Contracted from _Before_, as she called it. Faris could not remember _Before_. Flashes of light, of steel, of flame; this was all he knew of _Before_. He had just been a baby when they left. The sickness she had spread to everyone, she had said, infecting good and bad alike._

_His _Nani _broke into a fit of coughing behind him, gagging out and spraying the back of Faris' neck with sand and phlegm. Faris calmly wiped his neck clean._

_It wasn't her fault. He knew this. His _Nani _loved him. She had told him so; had promised him. Yet, darkness overtook her sometimes. The _Wehsh_. It clutched her, she said, moving her limbs like a puppet. It was the _Wehsh _that made her sick. The _Wehsh _that made her cry out late at night for the _Mukhadaraat_. It was the _Wehsh _that made her scream and wail for no apparent reason, clawing at her face and body in a frenzy. The _Wehsh _turned her into a beast, tinting her green eyes red and shaping her teeth into fangs._

_It was the _Wehsh _that made her beat him. When he was slow preparing the medicine, when he dropped the purse, when he made any mistake, the _Wehsh _made her strike him until his nose bled and his eyes ran. His grandmother loved him. He knew that. She had promised him. His grandmother sometimes gently ran her fingers through his hair while softly singing to him in the night. The _Wehsh _made her clutch him by the hair and drag him through the sand, tossing him to the earth and striking him in the face, the stomach, the head._

_With a shuddering sigh, his grandmother finished the third line. Faris closed his eyes tightly, bracing himself. A soft breath came from behind him._

_"Faris?"_

_"Yes, _Nani-jaan._"_

_"_Behta_, you didn't put out four units." _Units_. That was what she called them, a laughably-precise term for the sloppy troughs drawn in the sand. She said those were the standard amounts that people took _Before_. When they had her sickness, that was._

_Faris let out a slow, shuddering breath. "I know, _Nani-jaan_."_

_A pause. "Why is that, Faris?" The sweetness in her voice was deadly._

_Faris bit his lip. Fear struck through him, as the silence stretched. She repeated the question._

_"Because there isn't any more, _Nani-jaan._"_

_The silence grew to a roar. He could sense the _Wehsh_. He heard it in the ragged breaths coming from behind him, could feel it in the gaze boring into the back of his head. Blood began to trickle from his lip, so hard was he biting it, but he could not feel the stinging pain._

_"That can't be…" Soft, almost reflective. He felt her get to her knees. "That can't be." Her voice was strong, stronger even then when she had been singing._

_"That can't be!" She screamed at his back. Faris jumped at her sudden shout. "You are lying!"_

_Faris shook his head, unable to force himself to turn around as he screamed back tearfully, "I swear that's it! I swear!"_

_A blow clouted him on the side of his face, sending Faris crashing to the ground. His grandmother leapt upon him, striking him about the face as she screamed down at him. "_Liar!_" She screeched at him again and again, punctuating each word with a blow._

_Faris tossed his head from side to side, trying to avoid the sharp spines of his grandmother's bony knuckles. He had done this before, but the insanity now blazing in her eyes was beyond anything he had ever seen. _She is going to kill me this time!

_Spindly fingers wrapped in a vice about his neck, holding him still as she screamed down, "You took it for yourself, didn't you!" She smashed a fist into the child's face. "Didn't you!" The shriek of a banshee roared down at him._

_Faris couldn't breathe. He desperately tried to unwrap the vice from about his neck with tiny hands, but his grandmother continued to choke him with iron fingers._

_"Wallahi- Wallah… (I swear- I swear…)" He gagged out, consciousness rapidly fading._

_The blue sky framing the bloody-eyed demon standing over him was beginning to fade out, tendrils of black spider-silk beginning to spread through his vision._

_He was going to die._

_Suddenly, the vice about his neck was gone. Faris gasped for air, the flow whistling in and out of his deconstricting throat. The black curtains threading through his vision cleared to show his grandmother lying a few feet away with her arms wrapped about her knees._

_"_Behta_, I'm sorry…" She wept, "So, so sorry."_

_She is crying... His heart broke. He rolled over, crying himself, and hugged his grandmother fiercely from behind. "The _Wehsh…_" He choked out. She sobbed even harder as the boy held her frail body to his. "The _Wehsh _made you do it, _Nani-jaan_." It wasn't her fault. Her medicine, he must have dropped it somehow._

_Guilt welled up in him. Of _course _he had dropped it. That was the only thing that made sense. "_Nani-jaan_, I'm sorry!" He wailed, burying his head in her lap. She loved him, she had promised so; yet, he had betrayed her like this. She needed the medicine, needed _him_, and he had failed her. "It's my fault, _Nani!_" He cried, tears spilling down to soak the hem of her dress._

_The old woman hugged her sobbing grandchild to her. Hopeless eyes stared past his bowed head to the ever-barren South as she softly began to sing to him. There was no way out. Her grandson would die in the desert, never able to become a man. She crooned to him, rubbing a soothing hand up and down his back to calm him._

_If the desert wouldn't kill him, the _Wehsh _would._

_They were going to die here._


End file.
